DCPS

Friendship reacts to DC charter board’s decision blocking the network’s takeover of Eagle Academy

mlerner10 Charter School Expansion, Charter School Facilities, Charter Schools, DCPS, PCSB, School Choice Leave a comment

Yesterday, I received the following statement from Friendship PCS regarding the DC Public Charter School Board’s recent vote disallowing the charter’s takeover of Eagle Academy PCS:

“I am saddened for the children, families and staff affected and wish there had been another outcome that prioritized stability and a stronger educational experience. While we are disappointed in the outcome, we recognize there were many factors that the DC PCSB had to weigh. Eagle’s finances, which led to the PCSB citing Eagle for fiscal mismanagement, presented significant challenges. Yet, Friendship remains steadfast in our belief that Eagle’s children and families should not suffer for decisions they did not make,” said CEO Pat Brantley.

“Our commitment to our little Eagles and their families remains stronger than ever. While we were fully prepared to transform Eagle Academy by ensuring both Eagle campuses opened on time fully staffed and fully resourced, we are continuing to do everything we can to ensure Eagle’s children start the new school year strong,” Brantley continued.

“Friendship, along with the greater public education community, has wrapped its arms around, and opened its doors, to Eagle students, families, and staff who face uncertainty. Today, many former Eagles are now students and new team members at Friendship for the 2024-25 school year. That said, we recognize that far too many who were part of the Eagle community are still dealing with the repercussions of an abrupt closure,” Brantley stated.

Here is my original story on the charter board vote:

I have been away for several months studying the charter school movement in California. Upon my return I caught up on the terribly devastating news that due to actions by the DC Public Charter School Board Eagle Academy PCS had closed. The school would still be operating if the board had approved a takeover by Friendship PCS. It is easily the worst decision by the PCSB since its founding 28 years ago in 1996.

Charter supporters in this town have a tremendous problem. I am referring to the four members of the board who turned down the plan. Obviously, they are not school choice supporters. How else do you explain sending children from approximately 353 families, with many of these kids behaviorally and physically disabled, into a panic to find a new school with six days before the start of the new school year? Due to the late date of the move by the board many of these scholars will end up enrolled in the traditional sector. In addition, the building owned by Eagle, the McGogney School, the one with the swimming pool and highly specialized therapy rooms, will almost certainly be turned over to the city. Never would true charter supporters entertain these outcomes for even one second.

There are many reason why the charter board should have voted affirmatively immediately after Friendship made its proposal:

One – Stability for children and families. Friendship was prepared to come in on day one and begin teaching these students. During the two hearings before the board on this subject, Ms. Patricia Brantley, Friendship’s CEO, pointed out that a simulation using the charter board’s new accountability system ASPIRE showed that each of its six existing elementary schools would score at Level 1, the exemplary category. Students that were formally at Eagle would be receiving a stronger academic preparation than they had under the old regime.

Two – Friendship has a proven record of taking over failed charter schools. Friendship created the model of taking over failed schools to provide continuity for students and parents, and to keep these children with a seat in a charter, with the assumption of SouthEast Academy PCS in 2005. The LEA has repeated this procedure with its takeover of the Armstrong Campus and the online institute of the Dorothy I. Height Community Academy in 2015, IDEAL Academy in 2019, City Arts and Prep PCS, formally the William E. Doar, Jr. PCS for the Performing Arts of which I was a founding board member and board chair, also in 2019.

Three- The PCSB might have had a hand in Eagle’s fate. In 2022, Eagle Academy filed a charter amendment request to add the fourth and fifth grades to their current offering of Pre-Kindergarten three to third grades. The school argued that the addition of these grades would provide stability for the children and families attending the school. The board turned down this request because it said that Eagle had missed the deadline for requesting the additional grades. However, the inability of Eagle to offer parents a preschool to fifth grade institution provided a powerful incentive for them to look to other facilities for their educational needs. Indeed enrollment at Eagle decreased sharply after the pandemic, falling from 838 to 412 pupils, according to Laura Lumpkin of the Washington Post. Eagle then failed to react sufficiently to its loss of revenue which is what eventually led to its conclusion to relinquish its charter when the Friendship deal was denied. The school did not have the money to continue operating based upon its number of students.

Four – The decision was an affront to Patricia Brantley. This is an individual who exemplifies the Friendship values of integrity, responsibility, confidence, care, commitment, patience, persistence, and respect. In addition to overseeing the education of over 4,700 students in the District of Columbia and adding campuses to the Friendship portfolio as described above, she incorporated the Capital Experience Lab, CapX, into her Blow Pierce Middle School, after the proposed charter was rejected twice by the board. Ms. Brantley also almost single-handedly saved Monument Academy PCS by volunteering to serve on its board after the school had decided to close in the wake of severe discipline problems occurring at the site.

Ms. Brantley is a hero in our community, and to reject her gracious offer to come to the rescue of the families at Eagle was an affront to her stellar achievements.

The four board members who cast their vote against the takeover plan, Lea Crusey, board chair; Shantelle Wright, board treasurer; Shukurat Adamoh-Faniyan, board secretary; and Carisa Stanley Beatty, board member; together with the other trustees and staff, repeatedly referred to the Friendship plan as an asset acquisition. I guess in a technical way that is what it is. But what we are really talking about here is dignity for all the teachers, staff, parents, and students, who would have benefited from becoming part of Friendship.

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D.C. public school reform ended with the charter board’s failure to allow Eagle Academy’s takeover by Friendship

mlerner10 Charter School Expansion, Charter Schools, DCPS, PCSB, School Choice Leave a comment

I have been away for several months studying the charter school movement in California. Upon my return I caught up on the terribly devastating news that due to actions by the DC Public Charter School Board Eagle Academy PCS had closed. The school would still be operating if the board had approved a takeover by Friendship PCS. It is easily the worst decision by the PCSB since its founding 28 years ago in 1996.

Charter supporters in this town have a tremendous problem. I am referring to the four members of the board who turned down the plan. Obviously, they are not school choice supporters. How else do you explain sending children from approximately 353 families, with many of these kids behaviorally and physically disabled, into a panic to find a new school with six days before the start of the new school year? Due to the late date of the move by the board many of these scholars will end up enrolled in the traditional sector. In addition, the building owned by Eagle, the McGogney School, the one with the swimming pool and highly specialized therapy rooms, will almost certainly be turned over to the city. Never would true charter supporters entertain these outcomes for even one second.

There are many reason why the charter board should have voted affirmatively immediately after Friendship made its proposal:

One – Stability for children and families. Friendship was prepared to come in on day one and begin teaching these students. During the two hearings before the board on this subject, Ms. Patricia Brantley, Friendship’s CEO, pointed out that a simulation using the charter board’s new accountability system ASPIRE showed that each of its six existing elementary schools would score at Level 1, the exemplary category. Students that were formally at Eagle would be receiving a stronger academic preparation than they had under the old regime.

Two – Friendship has a proven record of taking over failed charter schools. Friendship created the model of taking over failed schools to provide continuity for students and parents, and to keep these children with a seat in a charter, with the assumption of SouthEast Academy PCS in 2005. The LEA has repeated this procedure with its takeover of the Armstrong Campus and the online institute of the Dorothy I. Height Community Academy in 2015, IDEAL Academy in 2019, City Arts and Prep PCS, formally the William E. Doar, Jr. PCS for the Performing Arts of which I was a founding board member and board chair, also in 2019.

Three- The PCSB might have had a hand in Eagle’s fate. In 2022, Eagle Academy filed a charter amendment request to add the fourth and fifth grades to their current offering of Pre-Kindergarten three to third grades. The school argued that the addition of these grades would provide stability for the children and families attending the school. The board turned down this request because it said that Eagle had missed the deadline for requesting the additional grades. However, the inability of Eagle to offer parents a preschool to fifth grade institution provided a powerful incentive for them to look to other facilities for their educational needs. Indeed enrollment at Eagle decreased sharply after the pandemic, falling from 838 to 412 pupils, according to Laura Lumpkin of the Washington Post. Eagle then failed to react sufficiently to its loss of revenue which is what eventually led to its conclusion to relinquish its charter when the Friendship deal was denied. The school did not have the money to continue operating based upon its number of students.

Four – The decision was an affront to Patricia Brantley. This is an individual who exemplifies the Friendship values of integrity, responsibility, confidence, care, commitment, patience, persistence, and respect. In addition to overseeing the education of over 4,700 students in the District of Columbia and adding campuses to the Friendship portfolio as described above, she incorporated the Capital Experience Lab, CapX, into her Blow Pierce Middle School, after the proposed charter was rejected twice by the board. Ms. Brantley also almost single-handedly saved Monument Academy PCS by volunteering to serve on its board after the school had decided to close in the wake of severe discipline problems occurring at the site.

Ms. Brantley is a hero in our community, and to reject her gracious offer to come to the rescue of the families at Eagle was an affront to her stellar achievements.

The four board members who cast their vote against the takeover plan, Lea Crusey, board chair; Shantelle Wright, board treasurer; Shukurat Adamoh-Faniyan, board secretary; and Carisa Stanley Beatty, board member; together with the other trustees and staff, repeatedly referred to the Friendship plan as an asset acquisition. I guess in a technical way that is what it is. But what we are really talking about here is dignity for all the teachers, staff, parents, and students, who would have benefited from becoming part of Friendship.

Increased public school spending in D.C. will lower student test scores

mlerner10 Charter School Finances, Covid-19, DC Charter School Alliance, DCPS, Mayor Bowser, Standardized Test Scores Leave a comment

Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced yesterday that she is proposing in her fiscal 2025 budget a 12.4 percent increase in the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula. The change, according to the Mayor’s press release regarding the jump in funding, will bring the foundation amount schools get to educate a child to $14,668. In the same document Ms. Bower demonstrates the irresponsibility of this move:

“Over the past five years, DCPS has added nearly one school-based staff member for every newly enrolled student, with the number of full-time employees growing by 18% compared to a 2% increase in enrollment.”

Is this any way to run an organization?

I can guess as to why schools are desperate for this cash. As part of the pandemic emergency, schools were flooded with an extra billion in taxpayer dollars. As a natural response to a handout, schools added personnel. Now that this revenue stream is disappearing, they have no way to pay for the extra staff.

The public school bureaucracy has never seen a revenue increase it did not like. Here is a typical response from the DC Charter School Alliance’s Arial Johnson:

“As our schools will soon face a funding cliff with federal dollars running out this year, we applaud Mayor Bowser’s historic proposed increase to the UPSFF and her steadfast commitment to investing in our city’s education system. We’re especially grateful for her commitment to ensuring the ongoing costs of educator raises are covered and her focus on supporting the students most in need by increasing the UPSFF weights for students designated at-risk, alternative students, and adult students.”

A city with a 33.7 percent student proficiency rate in English and a 21.8 percent student proficiency rate in math does not seem to prove the hypothesis that more money will solve our academic ills. And if history is any guide, it will not result in the intended impact. Below is a chart by the Cato Institute’s Andrew Coulson demonstrating the inverse relationship between spending and test scores in American schools from 1970 to 2010.

Unfortunately for our town, I only expect these trends to continue.

Public school reform advocates should vote for Muriel Bowser for D.C. Mayor

mlerner10 Charter School Facilities, D.C. Council, DCPS, Mayor Bowser, OSP, OSSE, PCSB, SBOE Leave a comment

I have to admit that Robert White Jr.’s comments on public education scare me. As WAMU’s Martin Austermuhle pointed out, when the Mayoral candidate was asked during a May 4, 2022 debate as to whether schools should remain under the control of the city’s chief executive, he apparently answered in this way:

“We need a mayor who’s not just going to go to the easy talking points, but who’s going to get in the details. And this mayor has not gotten into the details. And that’s why she doesn’t have a clear understanding of why so many students are leaving our schools. Right now, 30% of elementary school students leave D.C. Public Schools before middle school. There is an urgent problem, and we need a mayor with a sense of urgency on public education.”

Mr. White’s vague answer on this critical issue brought a strong response from current Mayor Muriel Bowser, according to the WAMU reporter:

“D.C. residents want a mayor they can trust. And if your answer shifts depending on which way the wind blows, they can’t trust you with their kids. And the most important thing you have to do as mayor is provide mayoral leadership of the schools. I think it is a seminal issue in this race. And I think what we’ve heard are councilmembers who are equivocating and waffling. I’m straight forward.”

For close observers of the education scene in the nation’s capital, the unified opinion is that we cannot move backward to the time when the D.C. Board of Education ran the public schools. Going to a public school was dangerous then, and there was a distinct lack of pedagogy going on in the classrooms. The buildings were crumbling literally and figuratively. We just cannot allow this to happen after so much progress.

Mayor Bowser has been a supporter of public education reform but has not been as strong as charter school advocates have desired. She has consistently annually raised the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula, the baseline money allocated each year to teach a student, but has lagged in her willingness to also increase the per pupil facility allotment. The most glaring weakness of her Administration has been the unwillingness to turn over surplus DCPS facilities to charter schools. While recent previous Mayors Adrien Fenty and Vincent Gray have given buildings in the double digits, I believe that Ms. Bowser has relinquished two. Her almost total avoidance of following the law when it comes to these structures resulted in an End The List Campaign in 2019 that mobilized the charter school community in an effort to force her to do the right thing.

The Mayor has also put pressure on the DC Public Charter School Board not to approve new schools. This is an area where the board has to find a way to stand up to her. Finally, she has been exceedingly slow to nominate replacement members to the PCSB.

Ms. Bowser has also been a steadfast supporter of continued operation of the Opportunity Scholarship Program, the private school scholarship plan for low income children living in D.C. A 2017 letter from D.C. Chairman Mendelson to the U.S. Congress to bring an end to the vouchers was opposed by the Mayor, and interestingly, was not signed by Councilmember Robert White.

There is one aspect of Mr. White’s proposed education program with which I strongly agree. I have advocated, as he is doing now, that the Office of the State Superintendent should be independent of the Mayor. I think OSSE should be separated from political pressure. However, although we agree on this one concept, I do not believe that education reform would be in steady hands if he won the upcoming election. Despite her failings in the area of public education which I have documented, Muriel Bowser is my choice for Mayor.

D.C. Council Chairman Mendelson breaks law when it comes to at-risk student funding; move applauded by DC Charter School Alliance

mlerner10 Charter School Finances, D.C. Council, DC Charter School Alliance, DCPS Leave a comment

A few days ago, the Washington Post’s Perry Stein revealed a move by D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson to increase the amount of money going to at-risk students as part of Mayor Muriel Bowser’s proposed fiscal year 2023 budget. Here’s the background:

The reporter states that at-risk students are “those who are homeless or in foster care, whose families qualify for food stamps, and students who are in high school and have been held back at least one year,” and they “account for about 47 percent of the city’s more than 95,000 public school children.” Ms. Stein adds that “The funding in the regular education budget for at-risk students amounts to an extra $3,000 each and is intended to alleviate the effects of poverty, which can make learning more challenging. The money could be used to pay for extra reading specialists, music teachers, or extended day programs.”

There have been calls by others, such as the organization DC Students Succeed, to increase the weight in revenue that schools receive for instructing at-risk students through the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula. It is the UPSFF that provides the extra $3,000 per pupil that Ms. Stein references. Mr. Mendelson took a different strategy. Again from the Washington Post article on this issue:

“The funding proposal — which the council must approve a second time as part of the city’s overall budget process — would spread an additional $41.6 million over four years across nearly 170 traditional public and charter schools. Unlike most targeted education funds, the money would bypass the school system’s central office and go directly to principals, giving them control over how to spend money on staff and services that could improve student outcomes.”

Ms. Stein explains how it would work:

“Mendelson’s proposal would give extra funding to schools that have a population of at-risk students that exceeds 40 percent. Schools that have populations of at-risk students that exceed 70 percent would receive even more. For example, Savoy Elementary has 265 students. Of those, 225 — or nearly 85 percent — are considered at risk.

In all, the school would receive more than $98,000 under the proposal. That’s on top of the approximately $3,000 each of the 225 at-risk student is allocated through the typical budget process.”

Mr. Mendelson is trying to address an issue that has plagued the traditional public school system. According to Ms. Stein:

“But numerous investigations and reports have determined that the city often spends this money incorrectly, using it to pay for routine costs instead of on programs to supplement basic school offerings. In some instances, that’s because many schools with high concentrations of at-risk students are under-enrolled and smaller schools are more expensive to operate. These schools’ budgets don’t stretch as far as the budgets for larger schools, so principals end up spending the money on basic staffing that other schools can cover with their baseline budgets.”

Here’s the problem. The 1995 D.C. School Reform Act that created charter schools in the District mandates that funding for all public school students go through the UPSFF. Here’s a summary of the law included in the Adequacy Study completed in 2013:

“The requirement that education for all students be funded on a uniform per-student basis, with the dollars following students into and out of whatever school they attend, was enacted into DC law in 1995. The UPSFF was established to carry out the mandate. The formula calculates funding based on students and their characteristics, not on school or local educational agency (LEA) differences. This uniformity requirement applies only to local funding, not to federal or private funding. It affects only DCPS and public charter school operating budgets, not capital budgets and investments. The UPSFF is intended to fund all traditional school-level and system level operations for which DCPS and public charter schools are responsible, including instructional, non instructional (facilities maintenance and operations), and administrative operations.”

Ms. Perry states in her article that Chairman Mendelson referred to his at-risk student funding proposal “the ‘single most important’ new idea in the fiscal year 2023 budget.” The only problem, however, is that the move is illegal in that it directly contradicts the language contained in the School Reform Act.

But breaking the law is obviously not important to the DC Charter School Alliance as long as it involves more money to its schools. The organization tweeted “Thank you @ChmnMendelson & @councilofdc for supporting students with an increase in funding for education! . . .Creating two new concentration weights to support schools serving higher populations of students designated at-risk”

I noticed that the Council also appropriated $300,000 to perform a new Adequacy Study, which is something I called for the other day. Perhaps this new report will call out the serious error Mr. Mendelson made in his effort to help at-risk students.

Time for a new D.C. schools Adequacy Study

mlerner10 DC Charter School Alliance, DCPS, Deputy Mayor for Education, Standardized Test Scores Leave a comment

The other day I read a statement by Shannon Hodge, executive director of the DC Charter School Alliance, calling for the Deputy Mayor for Education to complete a revised Adequacy Study. I could not agree more.

The last one was released in 2013 and it was groundbreaking. The research behind the report demonstrated that the District of Columbia was shy 40,000 quality seats, and it mapped the locations were new high performing classrooms were needed. But the most astonishing part of the work, lead by then Mayor Vincent Gray and my favorite Deputy Mayor for Education Abigail Smith, was that it put into print for the first time by the government the fact that charter schools were receiving inequitable funding compared to DCPS. The document pointed out that this was true because although all schools, charters and traditional, were funded at the same level through the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula, DCPS took advantage for free of government services, such as legal, information technology, and building maintenance, that charters could not access. It was a line of reasoning advanced for years and at every opportunity by Robert Cane, the prior head of Friends for Choice in Urban Schools. Mary Levy went on to quantify this disparity to be about $100 thousand to $125 thousand dollars a year.

The blatant unfairness continues unabated today and led to Eagle Academy PCS, Washington Latin PCS, when I was chair of its board, and the DC Association of Chartered Public School to sue the city to try and recover the revenue; a legal action that was eventually dismissed. Attorney Stephen Marcus led the effort. It was not something that charters wanted to do; we believed we had no other choice.

In addition, the 2013 study was extremely comprehensive in nature in that it tried to figure out exactly what the funding level of the UPSFF should be to eliminate the academic achievement gap in our town. It looked at each component of the per pupil allotment, including the much discussed weight for teaching at-risk students.

A lot has changed over nine years and much has not. The amount of tax revenue going to the two education sectors has gone up tremendously, now projected to exceed in fiscal year 2023 2.2 billion dollars annually. However, with this cash has not come the solution to the inequity that all of us involved in education want desperately to solve. When we do get around to testing our children it is almost certain, especially after two years of pandemic learning, that the difference in proficiency between the affluent and poor of 60 points has only increased.

It is imperative to perform another adequacy study. Let’s determine what the proper UPSFF should be. We should uncover how many quality seats the District needs to provide each and every scholar an exceptional pedagogical experience. How will we react if the number comes back again at 40,000?

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg donates $200 million to charter schools

mlerner10 Charter School Expansion, Charter School Facilities, DCPS, Mayor Bowser, PCSB, School Choice Leave a comment

A couple of days ago Cayla Bamberger of the New York Post revealed that former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg granted two charter networks, Success Academy PCS and Harlem Children’s Zone PCS, $100 million each in order to help them grow to accept more students. The money is only the beginning of Mr. Bloomberg’s investment in these alternative schools. His goal is to spend $750 million nationwide. The former Mayor told the Post:

“I don’t know that 30 years from now, when they don’t have the kind of life that we’d want for them you can explain to them what happened and why we were asleep at the switch.”

My point exactly. The pandemic has created a magnificent opportunity for charters. I do not understand why pro-charter organizations are not buying up vacant office buildings to house schools. I’m sure there are great deals to be had in the current marketplace. Is there no one in D.C. who will be embarrassed in 30 years that they did not act when they had the chance?

The DC Public Charter School is currently on a year-long pause for considering new schools and the expansion on existing ones. This needs to end now with the result being that it is simpler for new charters to open and easier to add more seats for those that are already operating.

I found interesting that the Washington Post’s Perry Stein found the need in her recent story about D.C. middle schools to talk about Mayor Bowser’s view of the expansion of the charter sector. The reporter wrote:

“While charter schools are independent, the mayor can have a role in shaping the sector and the Bowser administration has been considered charter-friendly. Bowser appoints the D.C. Public Charter School Board, which authorizes which charter schools can open and which must close for low-performance. She said she speaks with all her appointees about the need to approve only charters that address an unmet need in the city.”

Ms. Stein contradicts herself. She claims that charters are independent yet simultaneously points out that they are overseen by the PCSB whose members are selected by the Mayor. But this is slightly off topic. I just love the quote that Ms. Stein includes in the article from past charter board chair Rick Cruz regarding the growth of charters while many DCPS school are under enrolled.

“It means little to us and even less to many D.C. families to hear that there are thousands of seats in many schools that boast poor academic results.”

Right on! It is now time to wake up from our Covid-19 lull. Come on Mr. Bloomberg, District charters are ready to accept your cash. Who else is out there that wants to pitch in?

Mayor Bowser quietly transfers closed Wilkinson Elementary to DC Prep PCS

mlerner10 Charter School Facilities, Charter School Transparency, Charter Schools, Covid-19, D.C. Council, DCPS, Mayor Bowser, PCSB Leave a comment

A search yesterday of legislation before the D.C. Council revealed that Mayor Muriel Bowser has granted DC Prep PCS the right to lease DCPS’s former Wilkinson Elementary School in Ward 8 that was closed in 2009. The Council was scheduled to approve the transfer on Tuesday. The move by Ms. Bowser solves a major facility problem that for about three years has plagued the school founded by Emily Lawson in 2003. The approximately 146,000 square foot building will house DC Prep’s Anacostia elementary and middle schools.

Remember that back in 2019, shortly before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, DC Prep had purchased a property on Frankford Street S.E. for its Anacostia Middle School. The acquisition brought a public outcry at that year’s November meeting of the DC Public Charter School Board during which multiple community members testified that the charter had failed to inform them of its intention to open at this site. DC Prep had also leased space in the Birney Building and was hoping to take over this facility since the former Excel PCS was using this property, its rental agreement with Building Pathways was coming to an end, and it had converted to become a traditional school after being closed by the charter board. The Birney Building at the time was designated as a site for charters through an arrangement between Building Pathways and the D.C. Department of General Services.

Fast forward to May 2021 in one of the peaks in the public emergency, when Ms. Bowser took time to provide a facility update as part of a discussion around her upcoming budget proposal. As reported by the Washington Post’s Perry Stein:

“She plans to move the new Bard High School Early College to a permanent location in 2023 at the original Malcolm X Elementary — a shuttered campus in Southeast Washington — and allocate $80 million to the facility. The closed Spingarn High School in Northeast Washington would be home to the D.C. Infrastructure Academy. Excel Academy Public School will remain permanently at its current location at the old Birney building in Southeast Washington, which the city owns but has been leasing to charters. Bowser’s proposal would give charter school operators the option to lease the closed Wilkinson Elementary in Southeast Washington by 2024.”

The news that Wilkinson was being offered to charters represented only the second time in her tenure as Mayor that Ms. Bowser has turned a surplus DCPS building over to the alternative sector. In addition, the decision regarding the Birney Building was a blow to DC Prep. However, now we know that in the end the situation turned out exceedingly well for the charter school.

Anti-charter blogger Valerie Jablow has a lot to say about the apparent secretive nature of the awarding of Wilkinson to DC Prep. I have to say she has a point. There was no public announcement of the decision and it is not known if any other school bid for this property. The charter’s September 21, 2021 board meeting lists as an agenda item “AMC,” and then in the minutes of the session there is a discussion and vote on securing the new location but the name of the building is omitted. This is not exactly in the spirit of the Open Meetings law. As a movement we have got to do better than this.

Number of D.C. students permitted to learn virtually now in charter school’s court

mlerner10 Charter Schools, Covid-19, D.C. Council, DC Charter School Alliance, DCPS, Mayor Bowser, Virtual Learning Leave a comment

Yesterday, the D.C. Council went ahead and unanimously passed emergency legislation expanding the number of students permitted to take classes through distance learning, but the number was far less than Chairman Mendelson had in mind when he proposed the bill. As the Washington Post’s Perry Stein informed us on Tuesday, only an additional two hundred elementary school pupils and one hundred fifty middle school students will be able to participate “if their doctors recommend they stay at home or if they live with a relative who is at high risk for a severe case of the coronavirus.”

Those eligible will join approximately 285 DCPS scholars who are currently learning virtually.

The reason for the small incremental increase, according to Ms. Stein, was due to pressure from Mayor Bowser’s administration pointing to higher costs associated with allowing more children to be taught outside of the classroom. As I mentioned previously, the Council’s rule is that emergency legislation cannot include a rise in expenditures.

The act includes an extremely interesting caveat for charters. As stated in the Post story, “charter networks have more leeway, with the council saying each can decide how many eligible virtual learners to accommodate, though each network must cap it at no less than 3 percent of its student body.”

Actually, the situation has not changed for this sector over the past twenty-four hours. Do the DC PCSB, DC Charter School Alliance, and the sixty eight schools on one hundred thirty three campuses as independent local education agencies, fall in line blindly to the dictates of the Council, or do they legitimately take matters into their own hands in deciding how many students have to be in their buildings?

You already know my opinion as to the way things will play out. Stay with me as we watch events unfold.

Individual D.C. public schools are having to perform their own Covid-19 contact tracing

mlerner10 Charter School Facilities, Covid-19, DC Charter School Alliance, DCPS, Deputy Mayor for Education, Mayor Bowser, OSSE, PCSB Leave a comment

Yesterday, D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson held a seven-hour public hearing to gather information on the process of re-opening schools this fall. The Washington Post’s Perry Stein covered the event, focusing only on the experiences of DCPS. For example, she writes:

“Publicly available data indicates that, as of Friday, D.C. Public Schools had reported 370 positive cases among its 52,000 students and 1,088 students were quarantined. There had also been 120 positive cases among the system’s 7,500 employees. The District has an asymptomatic testing program, but so far, it has failed to meet its goal to test at least 10 percent of students for the virus in every school each week.”

Ms. Stein leaves out the 43,857 scholars who learn in our nation’s capital charters, I guess because she insists that these schools are “publicly funded but privately run.” I mean really, if your job is to put into words what is happening in this town’s classrooms cover both sectors or simply refer to yourself as the government-run school reporter.

In her piece she documents parent complaints about how the year is going, including unstandardized procedures if a student tests positive, the lack of a virtual option for families that would rather keep their kids at home, and a dearth of study material when students have to quarantine. But here is the part that I found particularly disturbing:

“The union representing the principals has said the administration of contact tracing has wrongly fallen to individual schools.”

This statement appears to be accurate because the issue is also mentioned by DC Public Charter School Board executive director Dr. Michelle Walker-Davis in her testimony:

“And schools are adapting protocols to keep up with the evolving guidance. The flexibility afforded to LEAs in the interpretation of the guidance has put a lot of pressure and tough decisions on school leaders. Some of that flexibility, intended to account for the unique characteristics of each school community, has made it difficult to explain protocols and procedures to families to get them comfortable with safety plans.

We also hear contact tracing needs to improve. Currently, contact tracing is done at the individual school level by the school staff, based on guidance from DC Health and with support from OSSE. This process is burdensome, taxing already stressed educators, including those at our state education agency, whose primary focus should be on teaching and learning.”

Really, on top of trying to teach kids wearing masks all day and using energy that should be channeled to instruction on keeping scholars safe, the individual staffs of our charters need to contact trace? You have got to be joking. This is the best plan that Mayor Bowser, Deputy Mayor for Education Paul Kihn, and acting D.C. State Superintendent of Education Christina Grant can come up with after all these months on planning? This is ridiculous.

I wish that the DC PCSB and the DC Charter School Alliance had listened to me. Charters have throughout their history taken matters into their own hands. When no one would provide them with a building, even though they are public schools, they figured out how to get them. When the payment from the city didn’t come on time they somehow managed to meet payroll. When a long line of education experts said they couldn’t close the academic achievement gap they produced standardized test scores as high as selective institutions.

The movement needs to stop feeling like they are somehow inferior to traditional facilities. Also, they have to end their fear of the Mayor. Charters must once again be bold in the face of all the odds stacked against them. That is the way we will reach the golden goal of equity.